dBrio – Design Excitement

Click in the little triangle under the settings button in the dashboard.  It drops down several options like:

• General
• Writing
• Reading
• Discussion
• Privacy
• Permalinks

Each of these options have a role to play.

General: In the general tab, you will be able to change the site title, the tag line, the wordpress address, the site address, the admin e-mail id, membership status, New user default role, set the time zone for your site, set the date format for your site, time format and the week start option for your site.

Writing:  Using the writings setting you can set the size of the post box as having a said number of lines.  You can set formatting for emoticons where smileys created using characters are automatically converted to graphics, you can set the default post category, default post format, and default link category.

You can also set features to post the content on wordpress using an e-mail.  You can set a secret e-mail account with POP3 access. All the mails received at this address will be automatically posted to wordpress. For this you need to set the mail server, login name, password and default mail category.

You can also set your writing options for remote publishing where you will have to activate the features as required in the writing settings.

Reading:  Using the reading settings you can adjust the look of your site for your reader.  You have options to set front page display, your latest posts, keep your home page static or you can set it to be the latest post as needed.  You can set the number of blog posts that should be displayed on your page, the syndication feed to be shown, and on whether the article should be full content or the summary.

Discussion:  Using the discussion settings you will be able to keep track of the activities on your site.  You can set pingbacks and trackbacks, you can decide whether you should allow people to post on your comments or not, you can set the various features for the comment box like allowing your comment author to fill out e-mail, need for registration or not, automatic closing of comments after said number of days, permitting nested comments, breaking comments in to pages, the top level comments in the page, the pages displayed by default, whether the comments should be older first or new first.

You can set to receive or not receive e-mails whenever you get a comment on your blog.

You can hold comments for moderation from administrator and you can blacklist comments from specific users suspected to be spams.

You can set avatar display, you can provide ratings for your comments, you can set automatic logos on comments based on user name or e-mail.

Privacy Settings: you can use this feature to block or allow search engines or to allow the site visibility to normal users and not for search engines.

Permalinks: By default the address for your pages consists of several question marks and numbers.  You can create custom URL address for your site for SEO purposes using this feature.  The common settings allowed are default, day and name, month and name, numeric, category base, tag base and more

The wordpress dashboard options provide you with everything you need to create websites of all types.  You have GUI features to help you manage:

Posts: You can post contents for blogs using the drop down features in the box. You can categorize your posts in to categories and tags.

Media: You can add your media files to the library and you can insert them in the appropriate locations in the web page using the insert feature.

Links: You can add links in to appropriate categories using this feature.

Pages: This feature enables you to create primary, secondary and tertiary web pages per your requirement.  You can group them in to menu types using the widgets feature.

Comments: You can manage comments you receive on your pages via this feature.

Appearance: You can control the overall appearance of your website by managing the theme , the header image, the background, organizing the menus while using widgets and many other features in the site.

Plugins: Your clients are going to ask you a whole lot of special effects and features, plug ins provide you with ocean lot of choices to make your site appear professional to impress your clients, if only you knew how to explore and identify the one right for your client’s needs.

Users: You can create and control the log in and permissions provided for the different users visiting the site.

Tools: You can import and export a whole lot of design and script settings using the import and export feature in the site.

Settings: There are several administrative, SEO and appearance settings that you can modify using the different buttons available in settings.

Every feature in the dashboard should be carefully  explored with perseverance before you can rush in to create a full blown site.

Patience pays off in the end, therefore, take time to explore every feature meticulously.

The WYSIWYG editor provides you with graphical interface tools to insert content and multimedia files in a screen space. On the backend, the WYSIWYG script converts your inserts in to HTML tags.

Interestingly, you can make a website with these tools even if you do not know about HTML!  The graphical interface is quite user friendly.

If you are looking to make a profession being a web designer, you can still make your living with WYSIWYG; however, knowing HTML provides you a feeling of authority, and it improves your self-confidence.

In problem situations, the designer with HTML knowledge has a better edge.

“iMovie customizes each shot with a Ken Burns-style panning effect that uses face detection to keep faces in the frame.”

Those who have had a tough time fitting the face in to the right frame – here is the magic key to your trouble!